Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said Tuesday he does not plan on serving in a second Trump administration as he is committed to focusing on his business ventures.
“Nothing in my life has gone according to the plans I’ve set, and that’s been the only consistent thing,” Kushner said at an Axios event in Miami, before emphasizing that he’s been “very clear” in his desire to focus on his private equity firm “at this phase” in his life.
Kushner served as a senior adviser in his father-in-law’s administration. He transitioned to the financial sector after leaving the White House, starting a Miami-based investment firm called Affinity Partners
Kushner said Tuesday that he’s enjoyed having his family “out of the spotlight” after he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, saw their White House roles end after her father left office.
He also said that he was “right now” committed to “my investors, to my firm, to my employees, to my partners, and that’s what I’m planning to do.”
Pressed on whether he would turn down an administration job from his father-in-law if asked directly, Kushner answered “yes.” He said Trump has had “time to really reflect” on his third presidential campaign.
“I think that the team around him is maybe the best he’s had,” Kushner said, predicting that if Trump is elected again, he would have a “level of competence and professionalism” in his White House that would be “even more so than it was in the last administration.”
Kushner said Trump’s first White House bid was a “family campaign,” in which he was an “outsider running.” But this time, he would be able “to build a really incredible team based on the people who are available.”
Later, Kushner again brushed off concerns about personnel in the Trump White House, saying that people who shouldn’t have been there initially were “weeded out” and that despite the chaos surrounding some individuals, “underneath the waves … water was calm.”
Kushner’s 2022 memoir provided insight into the pernicious environment inside the Trump West Wing, revealing how viciously members of his father-in-law’s team turned on one another from the earliest days of the administration, and how distrust and resentment affected every aspect of governing.
During Trump’s White House tenure, Kushner’s fingerprints were on many, if not all, of the administration’s agenda items – from the border wall and immigration to relations with China, criminal justice, trade agreements between Mexico and Canada and the United States, the Middle East and, ultimately, the White House’s coronavirus response.
Kushner also headed up the White House Office of American Innovation, whose goal was to modernize government technology.
Prior to working in the White House, Kushner had no political experience. He served as CEO of his family’s real estate development firm, Kushner Properties.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Kate Bennett contributed to this report.